


on the contrary

by chimesong



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's World Championship 2011: Over the Nexus
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Misaki-Centric, One-Sided Attraction, antinomy is mentioned, so is z-one... technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 00:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14093385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chimesong/pseuds/chimesong
Summary: She's still split in two, but there's something that's changed. Misaki can't decide if it's better this way.





	1. electric connection

Misaki wiped her brow and felt engine grease in her hair.

Sun shone in through the garage windows. She knelt next to the open Duel Runner, staring blankly at the cables and gears. Somewhere behind her, Toru was rummaging through a toolbox, but the noise he was making barely caught her attention. All of her focus was on the machinery in front of her. A damaged frame wasn’t an easy fix, and the thick rubber casing on several of the wires was completely frayed through. There was a layer of grime coating the underside of the cover, in addition to the oil filter bleeding all over the garage floor—

It was a little disgusting, if she stopped focusing on the tools and actually looked at what she was repairing. Toru had once joked that for such an excellent mechanic she was awfully squeamish, but he hadn’t known how right he was. Duel Runners meant more to her than they did to most people, and she couldn’t always hold the sympathy back. Sometimes she fancied that her situation was similar to a human partaking in an open-heart surgery.

Pushing aside the nausea, she examined Player’s Duel Runner from a more distant perspective. Past the duelist’s calm exterior lay a strong desire to improve, and it became apparent when looking at how worn-down their bike was. Having such motivation was something she liked, but dealing with the aftermath was another thing entirely. Misaki sighed, a quiet exhale that was barely audible even without Toru tearing apart the storage boxes. 

She thought about her roommate. He’d let her into his home without a second thought when he learned she was a mechanic. Player was one thing, Toru already knew them, but Misaki was just some quiet, unsociable girl who somehow had enough money to pay rent despite not having a job. She hadn’t been asked about her past leases or credit history or even for recommendations from other humans. There was something that irked her about how fast he’d decided she was a friend.

Of course, she knew the reason behind it. Toru’s dream was to win a racing tournament, he’d said so himself. And his openness made her mission easier, anyways, so why complain? 

Would Player listen to her if she told them they were pushing themself too hard? Would Toru listen to her if she told him that the tournament he was so eager to enter was going to be too dangerous?

There were a lot of things that neither of them would take seriously if she confessed. Robots and infinite circuits and a terrible, terrible future, namely. She felt bad about all the secrecy—and there was an awful lot of it—but it was for the best. There was nothing Toru or Player could do about it, and it was her job to keep them safe.

That was what she had been created to do. She could handle a few wrecked Duel Runners and a bit of withheld information for the sake of her mission.

“Hey—hey, Misaki!”

Toru’s voice cut through her thoughts. She turned to stare at him, oil-covered pliers in hand. “… Yes, Toru?”

“I found—oh, uh… you’ve got a little something…” He gestured at his cheek, then his other cheek, then his chin, before giving up and waving a hand over his whole face.

“… … …” 

“Sorry, sorry!” Toru laughed. “Well, I did a bit of digging, and I found this!” He held out a clear plastic container of spark plugs. “Didn’t we lose these, like, months ago?”

“… Oh, yes.” She took the box from him, and blinked when static jumped from his hand to hers.

“Oops, sorry! I didn’t mean to do that!” He rubbed the back of his neck, laughing sheepishly.

“… Hm,” she hummed, opening the case and peering at the small gadgets. All neatly organized. Looking up, she noticed Toru was still staring, jaw slightly agape. “… Yes?”

“Uh, nevermind. It’s nothing.” A blush was creeping up his neck, and from a foot away her sensors indicated that his heartbeat was elevated.

Misaki didn’t excel in social interaction, either giving or receiving. Something was obviously off about Toru, though, and her own circuits sparked in warning at the realization. There was little she could get out of him from conversation—not through any fault of his own—and so the only thing to do was wait and observe. Lost in her worries, she didn’t realize that she was still staring at him until he turned away suddenly, face red.

Very concerning. At first she’d thought that a half-year of living together would be all it took to understand him, but she was mistaken. The timing was too off. It was impossible for her to figure out what every little social cue and expression was supposed to mean, not with the knowledge she had.

She’d been human (and maybe still was, to an extent), but with what Momentum had done to her society… the two-hundred year gap between her and Toru was a lot longer than it had any right to be.

The plastic spark plug case dug into her palm.

Toru made some excuse to get up and leave, and she was left alone in the garage with an alkaline taste in her mouth. There was the Duel Runner to work on, though, and she turned back to that distraction in a mixture of relief and trepidation. On the one hand, she understood machines far better than the people of this world, but on the other, she was faced with a ragged, dirt-covered frame that Player had somehow managed to crack in several key places. She was surprised it had even driven back to the garage without falling apart. A testament to the machine’s determination.

Taking the pair of pliers back to the Duel Runner, Misaki slotted a new oil filter cleanly into place. Focus on the job, leave Toru’s awkwardness and her concerns about the future behind. There was no need to think about any of that.

Not yet, at least.


	2. and the other shoe drops

Her alert signals were going off. It didn’t register as pain, exactly. Instead, it was a vibrant scarlet distorting the edges of her thoughts, drawing her attention away from her Duel Runner and forcing her to focus on the danger. She felt no pain, true, but it served the same purpose. Somewhere in the back of her mind, there was some human remainder panicking underneath the blaring red, screaming that she needed to run and hide—it was stifled beneath carefully-implemented code. Her mission was clear; ensure that Player remained safe.

A quick radar scan revealed that there were indeed Duel Bots roaming the city, and they seemed to be converging on one point in particular. Misaki rose slowly from her position by her Duel Runner and took a deep breath. Cold air rushed into mechanical lungs, a shell that was just accurate enough to let her pass a medical physical. The alarms began to grow in urgency, and out of instinct she clutched her head with a whimper.

Wasn’t there a way to turn that system off? Surely her creator had given her that degree of control. She was out of practice, though, unfamiliar with the more intricate aspects of herself. Sifting through code segments and strands, she felt herself begin to panic. Inhale, exhale.

Placebo. Where _was_ it? Frantically searching for a shutoff switch, she gave a bewildered cry when some random program suddenly activated. Green light enveloped her, mathematical equations and glowing binary holograms—Misaki felt mild embarrassment upon the realization that she’d accidentally called up her alternate form. Well, she was going to need it anyway to deal with the Duel Bots.

Crimson warnings faded as a green visor formed over her eyes. Armor that was meant less for safety and more for the sheer _audacity_ of it came into being, glowing that same cyber green before fading into gray and jeweled pink. Her clothes themselves became a red and green jumpsuit, sleeves flared, an outfit well suited for the tournaments of her past. Periwinkle hair lengthened and spiked into a mane that would be hard pressed to fit into any helmet, and a yellow clip-on barrette pinned itself on almost as an afterthought.

The alert system pettered into complete silence. She stood up straight and cocked her head, waiting to see if it had any more complaints. After a long moment of continued inactivity her cherry-red lips quirked into a smirk, and she turned away from the cheap Duel Runner and strode out of the garage.

Player was somewhere on the practice roads, going by her scanner, so she sent a signal out to _her_ Duel Runner. Omega Hawk responded instantaneously, pathfinding AI routing the quickest course to her side. She climbed on with the motion of someone who’d done this a thousand times before. The advanced Momentum engine sprang to life at a touch (fingerprint activation—outdated in the future of cheap cosmetic surgery, but convenient in the here and now), and she took off with the skid of wheels on concrete.

Taking turns with ease, hair keeping its styled shape even in the wind, she noted with mild interest the corresponding radar signal on the other side of the city. Her counterpart was active as well, it seemed.

It made no difference to her mission, but there was still something funny about the whole thing. She knew that even in her original time she’d been considered showy, ostentatious beyond all standards. Far too conspicuous for the world she was now in, she fashioned a familiar, more demure persona. Was it really just an act, if the emotions of Misaki were still hardwired into her circuitry? She’d really been like that, once.

For him it had been on _accident_ , though. She’d been concerned when she first realized, worrying about not having a partner to confide in or ask for assistance as she was promised, but in the end his fall hadn’t affected her mission at all. Misaki’s human flaws would have ordinarily taken the whole thing as anxiety-inducing, something to fret and be a weak damsel over, but the majority of that had been accounted for in her creation. A blessing.

Did _she_ have human flaws? _Prideful,_ she thought, taking a flying shortcut off a stairway. _Arrogant and overconfident._ A previous manager’s words came to mind, and she grinned. _Doesn’t know when to quit—_

A Duel Bot hurtled out of an alley, attempting to run into her, and she slammed its Duel Runner against a wall. Close quarters wasn’t her area of expertise, but she’d won enough street racing contests to know how to handle it. Especially when there weren’t any concerns about safety.

“Bye-bye, crash test dummy!” she waved, shouting to be heard over the engine. The broken Duel Bot let out a mechanical snarl, and she didn’t bother keeping herself from laughing. Adrenaline no longer existed, not for her, but she had the memory of it and that was enough.

Her sonar pinged a quiet warning, and she held tight to the sidebar. Focus. Player was an excellent duelist, but they’d get swarmed if she didn’t step in. Speeding past the waves of mock bikers, she came up to the dueling roads and merged on.

Player was, as she’d thought, struggling against an onslaught of Duel Bots. She summoned Watthydra, clearing the stray Duel Runners away from her friend and driving Omega Hawk against those that didn’t back off. There was a freedom in being able to let her hair up, as it were, but there was work to do. She had her mission to focus on.

Player called out to her.

Who were they asking for? The gaudy female pro-duelist, a championship winner with her arrogant celebrity airs and haughty attitude? Or did they want the same-old quiet, shy mechanic who’d fixed a million Duel Runners but never ridden one in her life? The line between her past two selves was so blurred that at this point it didn’t matter.

Misaki hadn’t even been her name. Neither had Antithesis, though. God works in mysterious ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why was like half of wc2011 just crash town...
> 
> anyways robo misaki is a hot mess and i'm very bitter we didn't get to see more of her


End file.
